I’ve so far avoided the big one: War. We have lived with the idea that we are in possession of weapons that could make the planet uninhabitable for virtually (but not quite) all forms of life, and plenty of stories have been written about such an apocalypse, including Aden Cabro with his Island Survival series and Boyd Craven, with his long The World Burns series and plenty of others. Of course, the seminal post-nuclear war stories are ones like Neville Shute’s ON THE BEACH and David Brin’s THE POSTMAN, both set after a nuclear apocalypse.
There are two types of nuclear devastation. In Shute’s novel, it is the devastation from the nuclear bombs themselves, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, multiplied by a hundred. In Brin’s story it may involve some bombs as it is definitely post-war, but a lot of the problems are created by the destroyed electronics because of the nuclear EMP that knocks out technology. Craven and many other PA writers use EMPs to destroy tech in their stories, which can (and often does) lead to a story set in the sub-sub-genre of “prepper” fiction.
One of my favorite EMP stories is William Forstchen’s ONE SECOND AFTER, in which a college history professor (who happens to be retired military) is thrust into a leadership position in his small North Carolina mountain town. The story focuses on the people and how they live, how they defend themselves, and how they move past the apocalyptic event—a classic post-apocalyptic story. (I also loved PILLAR IN THE SKY, a book by Forstchen about a space elevator.) Like the Niven and Pournelle book, this one has a bit of everything in it.
War might not be nuclear, however, and actor/director Levar Burton wrote his debut novel AFTERMATH about a post-civil/race war America also dealing with devastation brought on by a killer earthquake at the New Madrid Fault in the middle of the country. It highlighted the aftereffects of a destructive war made worse by natural disaster, including financial collapse and civil unrest brought on by the assassination of the first African-American president days after his election in 2012. (He missed the mark on that—Obama was elected in 2008 and survived two terms as a popular president, generally.) This scenario seems more likely today than most of the others, at least in the United States. But that’s a political discussion for another time (or never, at least at this blog).
Nuclear holocaust, EMP, or a different kind of war? Dan Simmons, in his book FLASHBACK, describes a United States where left-wing policies have left us vulnerable to an economic war of some kind. As it’s been a while since I have read it, and I don’t generally agree with Simmons’s politics, I don’t recall exactly what happened—just that the United States are a shell of their former self, with Japan (or is it China?) calling the economic shots. In Simmons’s view, the policies are enough to create a dystopia where the drug called “Flashback” is used to relive happier times. It’s not survivalist or apocalyptic in nature, but it is definitely a future created by a different kind of war entirely.
I’m sure I’m missing some sorts of war that would cause an apocalypse, and thus lead to a post-apocalyptic world. When I was a kid, I wrote a story about me and my friends fighting off a Russian (?) army after they invaded and conquered the United States. A bunch of junior high kids fighting a fully trained army, and winning? I know, totally unrealistic—but totally fun for me at that age. Could that happen? It seems unlikely that another country would be able to invade and hold a country like the United States—one that is not only the strongest militarily, but also protected by allies on the north and south and oceans on the east and west. It would take a Manchurian Candidate of some sort to create the conditions where such a thing could happen. Life imitates art? Probably not, but who knows?
In the final post of this series, I’ll have a few final thoughts, and maybe give some insights into the PA fiction I’ve written (and am writing) and which I hope to publish some day.